On July 23, 2014...
...the first introductory conversation took place in the premises of the Rentaplus Marketing GmbH in Dortmund.
The Rentaplus Marketing GmbH is a newly founded company of three whose employees have many years of professional experience
in the field of financial services.
Primary contacts: Joseph P. Simon (Managing Director), Nicola Sievert (Administration).
Following the presentation of our services spectrum I listened - for about 2 hours.
On the same day I sent a detailed summary of the main results.
It quickly became clear that the range of this potential job would be very comprehensive.
I decided to involve my brother Harald Mühlhoff in the upcoming project especially for IT-infrastructure-related topics.
A few days later - on July 26 - I sent the first designs for a logo, a business card and a starting page of a website.
Of course detailed explanations why one or the other approach was chosen could not be missed.
The very positive and with first substantive remarks provided feedback from the customer followed promptly.
On August 7, the first follow-up meeting, which now also my brother participated to clarify functional and technical requirements
for the office IT infrastructure, took place to further deepening content and prepare of a concrete offer.
The very next day I sent - corresponding to the customer requirements - slightly revised designs for the logo and the website.
Meanwhile my brother prepared the concept for the office IT infrastructure and took corresponding offers from subcontractors.
According to our decisions from the meeting on 7 August we submitted our clearly separated and well arranged porposals
to our contacts at Rentaplus on August 12.
On August 21, 2014...
...the official contract was awarded.
The implementation of most of the positions shown below should be completed by the end of September.
Let's do it!
Main activities of Torsten Mühlhoff
Logo and Claim
Concise, simple, positive. These were the core requirements for the brand name and logo.
The company and product name "Rentaplus" and the slogan "more for later" (in German: "mehr für später") were already set.
In addition it has been suggested that the use of a fresh green and blue tone was requested.
Essential in the development of the design is, among other things, the optimal usability in different print and online media.
Rentaplus - Logo and Claim
The business cards
Sure, modern and easy to read.
The business cards are an important print medium for conveying the brand and company image.
The inserted QR code references on different pages of the website corresponding of the function of a person.
Business card (example)
Slogan
The slogan "yes, I want... even later to..." (in German: "ja, ich will... auch später noch...")
finds its use - after joint discussion - in 5 additions:
"...live beautifully", "...travel beautifully", "...reside beautifully", "...dine beautifully" "...shop beautifully"
(in German: "...schön leben", "...schön reisen", "...schön wohnen", "...schön essen", "...schön shoppen").
These phrases describe the main drivers why a customer should buy the financial products.
They are used particularly in conjunction with the main motifs used.
Rentaplus - Slogan (example)
The main motifs
In connection with the various forms of slogans visualizations had to be found
which pick up on the topic as well as underline the positive direction of the company and in particular the financial products offered.
After a short discussion, they agreed on three motifs per slogan, so that it was necessary to evaluate 15 images.
The basic condition of high resolution was of great importance.
For these motives should not only be used in the internet presence, but also in the corporate / product brochure and
on 8mm thick acrylic murals at 180cm x 72cm to decorate the office space.
Rentaplus - Nicola Sievert is very excited about the arrivaled murals
Rentaplus - Mural (example)
Rentaplus - Main motifs (overview)
The office door signs
No standard and suitable for corporate appearance.
So-called "word clouds" provide a method for information visualization.
In the context of the office door signs the word repetitions intensify the statement and
grab the stylistic means used at various points again (for example, corporate sign).
Rentaplus - Office door signs
The corporate sign
Coming out of the elevator the corporate sign which, like the murals is printed in the format 180cm x 72cm on 8mm thick acrylic,
welcomes the customers of Rentaplus.
Visually, this is a nice blend of the appearance of the office door signs and the murals.
It picks up different content and visual elements.
Rentaplus - Corporate sign
The brochure
Who is Rentaplus?
What does this business stand for?
What products are available?
Why should you choose these products?
These questions are answered in a modern, uncluttered manner by the corporate and product brochure,
which we will gladly provide on this page as a so-called flipping book (German only).
The website
In general, the website of a company is - or rather: it should be -
the communication medium par excellence.
Correspondingly high are the demands on the visual appearance, on the handling and
on the underlying technology (availability / stability, speed, security).
Picking up the corporate design the appearance of the website must convey the philosophy
of the company and of its services in an optimal way.
In the case of Rentaplus the additional task was to provide the functionality to order one of the two main products online.
But see for yourself...
Rentaplus - Website (screen copy of the upper half of the starting page; German only)
The office application for managing customer data
The data stored on the database server are replicated with the corresponding database system in the office environment at Rentaplus
for various evaluation and communication purposes.
And much more...
But that is not enough.
Numerous other activities complemented the task package of Torsten Mühlhoff:
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Design and production of a good 7-minute presentation videos
which possibly makes the first "personal" contact with the customer on the website.
The sequences for the video were shot during an afternoon in the office of Rentaplus Dortmund in front of a green screen.
Click on the image to go to the presentation video of Joseph. P. Simon on the website of Rentaplus.
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Design and creation of a 33 slides animated PowerPoint presentation
serving financial advisors as an support for corporate and product communication.
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Design and production of a very high quality rollup in the format of 100cm x 220cm,
which will be used at distribution events.
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Design of a loan certificate, which will be handed over to the customer after signing.
This is implemented as a fillable PDF form.
The graphic elements were pre-printed on high quality paper,
so that only signing-specific text blocks are printed on this template.
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Design of two Company stamps.
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Design of pins as a polished metal badge in 3D, logo embossed and sandblasted background.
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Design and production of a two-side company and product flyer in the format â…“ A4 (portrait).
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Design of an invitation flyer in the format â…“ A4 (landscape) for an information event.
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Design and implementation of various contract documents such as sales contract, info obligations, drawing conditions,
risk warnings or signing form.
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Design and implementation of the stationery.
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Uniform e-mail signatures, inter alia, for use in Outlook 2013.
The link behind the company name and the company logo refers to the website of Rentaplus.
Main activities of Harald Mühlhoff
Office IT infrastructure
Except for an existing network cabling, a 19-inch server rack and two DSL connections there was not really much there.
Very positive was the customer's openness for contemporary technologies
such as Windows 8.1 Professional, Windows Mobile 8.1, Microsoft Surface Pro 3, use of the cloud.
So it was possible to quickly create a concept and provide robust recommendations for the hardware.
The delivery of the hardware (server and client systems) was carried out by a preferred hardware supplier,
the configuration by Harald Mühlhoff.
To use the two DSL connections optimally, a special router was used for simultaneous connections.
In addition a manageable gigabit switch was installed including the use of
link aggregation
for high-performance connections to the professional network storage solution that was set up in
Raid 6.
Provisioned cloud storage is used for offsite backup.
To ensure the backup of the client devices the system image backup and the file version history in Windows 8.1 was implemented.
As a professional e-mail / office solution we opted for the use of Microsoft Office 365 Small Business.
Instant mobile access to email, shared calendars, etc. is made available by multiple Lumia 930 smartphones.
Last, but not least a Microsoft Xbox One is as a high-quality Skype client in conjunction with a large format TV in the conference room.
Cloud-based hosting of the website
Two virtual Windows Server 2012 R2 systems ensure the lowest possible downtime.
In this case, the second system was created as a clone of the first.
The "ClusterIP" function allows fast switching in case of disorder or in the context of system / software updates ("fail-over scenarios").
The customer data are inter alia protected through the use of SSL server certificates.
Business portraits of main contacts
In the premises of the customer a "mobile studio" with Light Control Octabox and Striplights has been established.
The images were processed with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.
Development and Art